Quite a Few Years
by Hannan
Summary: The Doctor's musings on his life and his regrets.  One shot, a bit dark


Humans can only dream of what I have at my fingertips. I have met and befriended people all over time and space, having adventures most only find at a movie. My worries will never include anything so trivial as _death_.

I don't have to be tied down to one place, as I can choose anywhere. I know more than the greatest scholar on earth. Earth's _higher education_ is a bit dry for me.

(But I'm alone)

When a human asks me my age, there are times when I'm not sure how to answer. For a Timelord, I'm quite normal aged, well, at least relatively. For a human, I'm quite a few years older than any of them.

My people were the greatest of all time. Our civilization made even the most civilized now look foolish.

(But they're gone)

I don't have the luxury of a family. At one time, I looked in my children's faces, sure that I would teach them and travel with them for as many years as I was alive. My wife, lost to time, so beautiful it would make your eyes hurt. We loved each other blindly, as young as we were, making a life for ourselves in the vastness of space and our planet. I shudder when I think of my lost life, feeling like I've lived fifty lives, thousands of years.

Immortality is overrated.

I am the last of my kind. I had to watch my people as they were locked away, lost to time. Realizing with growing horror that there was no one who would ever feel both of their own hearts beating, a love for their civilization, a true time lord, ever again. I'm a dying specimen.

Even my own clone, the accidental result of desperation and terror, has more hope than I. He, while mortal, can grow old. He, while aging, can experience living sedentarily. He, while dying, can make a life for himself. He has everything I want, but can never have.

(He gave Rose something I couldn't)

Rose trusted that I would save her. She trusted that I would come for her, find a way, push the limits of space and time in such a way as to hold her in my arms once more.

(She was wrong)

I didn't find her. She found me, ramming back into my life and than out again with amazing speed.

I was foolish to hold her hand those times. Living in the moment rather than thinking of her. Letting her fall for me as I had for her, a weakness laid in my life that I had let out of my control. The hardest thought now is that she is still in love with me.

But it's the wrong me.

Sarah Jane was so good to me, but I let her down. I just can't let myself be open to love again. I've lost my family, my people, my planet, Rose. She trusted that I would come back to find her, later, when the time was right.

(I didn't)

And I didn't love her like she did me.

I'm hundreds of years older than her; how could I let her heart break when I knew I could never allow it to happen?

And Martha. She was strong, independent. Or at least seemingly so. I knew from the beginning that she was depending on me too much. And when I kissed her, it wasn't because I wanted to give her any false presumptions. She loved, I traveled. We silently agreed not to talk of why she followed me to the ends of the earth.

(And she still trusts you?)

I made Jack immortal. How could I not protect him from the same curse I've been plagued with?

(I travel and move forward; there's nothing to go back to)

And yet I was there when he finally died. He died and I was still alive, as has happened with all the people who've come to trust me. They die and leave me off to have adventures by myself.

He remembered me all the way to the end, at least. I stole Donna's memories as well as time of her life. She fuels my daily regrets, banging myself over the head as to why I ever let someone else come with me and put herself in danger when I knew the risks. All over the universe her name is known, and she can't even remember why.

Even my daughter, the echo of my great race, I couldn't keep alive for more than a week. The traces of my own children so subtly bright in her features that I couldn't help but love her. She lacked my wife's characteristics, though, making her seem like she was only half of mine, her hair too bright and her nose too upturned to ever pass for my wife. Even so, even with two hearts that knew nothing of what she partially came from, I wish I could have kept her for a little longer. I wish I could have told her great stories like I used to tell my daughter. Jenny never even knew what it was like to be tucked in at night.

(People die for me and all I do is move on)

How can I deserve any of the good moments I've received? But for every good memory I've been given, the weight of my betrayal, my inability to keep them safe, just reminds me of what a monster I am. The Doctor. Able to cure no one.


End file.
